Tuesday, 7 June 2016

Lili Reisenbichler

Lili on a motorbike

Lili Reisenbichlerraced in German touring car
championships from 1974 to 1987, including touring-based prototypes in
sportscar races.

Slovenian-born but living in
Germany, she got into motorsport through her partner, a Mercedes engineer. Her
first racing cars were a Ford Escort and an NSU TT. In the former, she appeared
in her first major race in 1975: the Hockenheim 100 Miles. She was seventh in
Group 1. The car was an RS2000. In the same car, she tackled the Sembach DRP
round, and was fifth in class. Early in the season, she had taken part in
another non-championship event, a street race at Saarlouis. She was sixth, and
fourth in her class.

For the next few seasons, she made
occasional appearances in circuit races and hillclimbs in Germany and Austria.
In 1977, she raced an NSU TT in the Mainz-Finthen round of the DRM, finishing
seventh in class. In the same car, at the same track, she also tackled a round
of the DRP series, finishing second in class. Later in the season, she was
fifth in class at Kassel-Calden, another airfield circuit.

In 1978, she teamed up with Heidi
Blechinger for the Grosser Preis der Tourenwagen at the Nürburgring. They drove
an Audi 50 together, and were ninth in
class. Driving solo, Lili took the Audi to a class fourth in the 100 Meilen
Hockenheim. This was the start of a part-season in the Audi, sponsored by
Duckhams; her other results were a ninth in class at Saarlouis, and eleventh at
Hockenheim again.

She also competed in the Nürburgring
24 Hours in an Alpine-Renault, but the results are not readily available.

Lili encountered various problems
with funding in the early part of her career, in common with many other
drivers, but she was better at finding solutions to this than most. She stayed
clear of genuine scandal, but was not afraid of using her good looks and lively
personality as a selling point. As well as this, she worked in various jobs to
finance her motorsport habit. This made her either very popular, or unpopular,
depending on whose opinion was sought.

In 1979, her career started to
take off, albeit slowly. She got herself a seat with the Warsteiner team in a
BMW M1, and entered the ADAC Bilstein Super-Sprint at the Nürburgring. She was
eleventh overall in Division 1, against a series of Porsches, and fourth in
class. She also continued to race the Audi, and was in second place in one race
at Zandvoort, when she went onto the grass and suffered an embarrassing roll,
thankfully unharmed.

The start of the new decade saw
Lili taking another step up in the motorsport world. She started with another
run in a BMW M1, driving for Team Airpress Wind Deflectors. She was ninth at
the Hockenheim DRM round (the Jim Clark Trophy). Not long after, she teamed up
with Ford Berkenkamp Racing, initially for the Nürburgring 1000km. The team put
her in two of its cars, a Capri and an Escort. She did not finish in the Capri,
but was seventeenth, with a class win, in the Escort. Her co-drivers were
Dieter Selzer and Günther Braumüller. A similar arrangement ensued for the Nürburgring
Grand Prix meeting, although it was less successful for Lili. Later in the
season, she drove solo for the team in an Escort, and was eighteenth at
Salzburg and twentieth at Hockenheim, in the DRM. In the second-tier DRP touring
car championship, she drove a new Ford Fiesta. She was third in class at Avus,
and would have been second at Hockenheim, had she not been disqualified. The
reasons for this are unclear.

A second season with the
Berkenkamp Ford operation followed in 1981, with a much expanded programme for
Lili. In the first three rounds of the DRM, she scored three top-ten finishes,
two ninths and an eighth. The rest of the DRM season was rather inconsistent
for both her and team-mate Dieter Selzer, mostly just missing the top ten. Her
highlight of the latter part of the season was a tenth place, at the Nürburgring
Supersprint.

She stayed in the DRM in 1982, but
moved teams to Zakspeed Ford, one of the leading touring car stables of the
time. Their Capri prototype remains the stuff of legends. Lili got to drive it
this year. Her season began badly, and she dropped out of the first DRM round,
at Zolder, on only her second lap. None of her other three races in the Capri
led to a finish, either.

In 1983, she was part of the
Berlin-based Autoveri team, driving a Ford Escort. She was entered into the
German and Central European rounds of the ETCC, and managed to finish one, the
Brno Grand Prix, in 27th place. For the Touring Car Grand Prix at
the Nürburgring, she was paired with Jürgen Hammelman and the American driver,
Deborah Gregg, but they did not finish. She entered the Spa 24 Hours, but only
got in as a reserve driver, and did not race.

The main, professional part of her
career finishes here, at the age of 35. She continued to race occasionally until
about 1987, but not in major events. Her business acumen and media experience
meant that she was not out of work for long, and she became a successful
journalist and photographer, covering a range of subjects, as well sitting on
the board of a furniture company, and running a film production company.

In recent years, she has been
competing occasionally in historics in Germany. She has driven a BMW in classic
rallies.